Privacy Is Too Big to Understand; The New York Times, April 16, 2019

Charlie Warzel, The New York Times; Privacy Is Too Big to Understand

At its heart, privacy is about how data is used to take away our control. 

"Privacy Is Too Big to Understand

“Privacy” is an impoverished word — far too small a word to describe what we talk about when we talk about the mining, transmission, storing, buying, selling, use and misuse of our personal information.

 

In this way, the concept of digital privacy shares similarities with weighty crises like climate change. Both are what the theorist Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects,” a concept so all-encompassing that it is impossible to adequately describe. Dr. Morton’s chief examples of hyperobjects are climate change and global warming, which invite skepticism because their scale is so vast and sometimes abstract.

 

Here’s another way to think of it: You are losing control over your life. When technology governs so many aspects of our lives — and when that technology is powered by the exploitation of our data — privacy isn’t just about knowing your secrets, it’s about autonomy. That’s how Matt Cagle, a technology and civil liberties attorney at the A.C.L.U., described it to me recently.

 

“Privacy is really about being able to define for ourselves who we are for the world and on our own terms,” he said. “That’s not a choice that belongs to an algorithm or data broker and definitely not to Facebook.”

 

At its heart, privacy is about how that data is used to take away our control. Today, our control is chipped away in ways large and small."